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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Well, this is it - my next post will be a vlog! I'm stating it here to be held accountable, haha. I've asked for suggestions from around the interwebz as to what my first vlog should be about. The first one is always the hardest, isn't it? I've had some good suggestions - Children, and my Pagan life in general.

So, do you agree? What do you suggest? What do you want to see, what do you want to see me talk about? I won't ask this every time, trust me - I just have no idea what to start with!!

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Recently we all witnessed - and some participated - in the fights our American friends were waging against SOPA and PIPA. What most Canadians don't know is that Bill C-11, currently about to come before the House of Commons (again), is backed by the same "people" (corporations are people too! /snark/) who backed SOPA, and is based on similar US laws.

I'll admit that I don't truly know enough to write about it well, but other people do:

Just because I don't know enough to write about something doesn't mean I can't share - and it doesn't mean you can't either. Share the HECK out of this. I don't care if you share my post or not. Share an article. Tell people. Go to Google, search Bill C-11, click News on the left column of Google, then look and share those articles.

We Canadians are notorious for political apathy, which is why the Conservative government and Stephen Harper are still in charge. The Conservatives have managed (somehow) to do some great things, but this will not be one of them.

For my American readers, especially my blogging friends:

Please share this, or an article about this. You never know how many Canadian readers you have, especially on your Facebook pages. This needs to be stopped sooner rather than later - and we don't have a lot of time.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Last night, the power went out. Again. It seems we've had a lot of power outages this year, more than normal. So, while waiting up to listen for Brianna (as the monitors were off) this is how I spend my time:

Candles and books. I had about 30 candles going. What more do you really need?

Well, heat, for one thing. Especially in a Canadian winter. It was only just as I had gotten warm in bed that I realized I should go check that Brianna was covered. So, out of bed I went to make sure she had her blankets on. She didn't, so it's a good thing I checked. I covered her up, went back to bed, and couldn't get warm again. It was a fun night. Can't you just hear my eyes rolling?

So, that was my night. In updates, Sean is doing good, has his stress test on Tuesday. He still has to call and make an appointment for a follow up, but I'm nudging him to do that today.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

My good friend at Cauldron Full of Stars blogged about this the other day, and I felt compelled to as well. It's pretty well known that a movie version of The Lorax is being made by Universal. What may not be so well known (but is becoming so) is that the message of preservation and environmental education is not to be included.

The Lorax was (and still is) one of my favorite books. It captures the imagination at the same time it teaches you to treasure what we have while we have it, as well as teaching you to preserve what we have. It's a message that is becoming more and more important, yet is being lost throughout society. Wars are being waged for oil, and environmental legislation is being ignored. I'm ashamed to say that my own country, Canada, has dropped out of the Kyoto Accord - the first country to do so.

Universal has an incredible opportunity. The sad truth is that most of our children these days probably spend more time watching TV than reading books, so choosing to leave such an important message out of a move that most children will probably see - it's inexcusable.

Someone else thinks so too - a classroom of fourth graders from Brookline, MA., who with the help of their teacher has started a petition to ask Universal to stay true to the message of the book. It takes 5 minutes (if that) to sign the petition - we all have 5 minutes. Let's share this message - it's one we can't afford to ignore.

Friday, January 20, 2012

So, since my previous post about Sean's hospital visit and what happened, things had been going fairly well. He had the day off on Wednesday, and went for a nap late that afternoon. At 5:30, he woke up and told me he was feeling faint and dizzy, and that it felt like his heart was working harder than normal. So we packed up Brianna and debated going to the clinic as opposed to the hospital, because they didn't find anything last time. By the time we left my parent's house from dropping off Brianna, Sean's arm was starting to feel numb again and he was having stabbing pains in his chest - something he didn't have the first time.

To start, he had the same tests as last time - the bloodwork, then wait 2 hours, then get more bloodwork, then go have an X-ray and wait for the 2nd results to come back because those are the important ones. The bloodwork in this case checks for a certain hormone, the name of which I cannot remember, which shows that there has been a blockage or clot in the heart. I've been calling it the "Whatever" hormone. His second bloodwork results came back with slightly elevated "Whatever" levels. So at that they sent him for a CT scan from his waist up, to look for any clots. They found nothing, and apparently he heart and lungs look "perfect" according to the ER Doctor. In addition to the upcoming stress test, he now is scheduled for a 24 hour Holtor Monitor come Monday, and he had an Echo (heart ultrasound) today. Apparently, he has a very photogenic heart according to the technician. o.O

He is doing fine now - a little tired and drained of course - but still no answers. At least tests are being done. I can't wait until we know what the hell is wrong - at least then we can do something about it.

Friday, January 13, 2012

I'm really, truly annoyed at this. We all know the way consumerism works, right? Supply and demand. In general, if people want something, they buy it. The store buys more of it, which continues to be bought by the public, because people want it. If people don't buy a product, the store doesn't order more of it, and it eventually disappears of the shelf. Right?

I'm so sick and tired of all the bitching (excuse my french) lately about oil companies. Be it the oil sands, or rigs anywhere in the world, it doesn't matter how sustainable or not they are trying to be. It just doesn't matter. People are constantly wanting the oil companies to be shut down, be regulated, only produce so much per year, and so on. It doesn't work that way.

Why? Well, because oil is a product. People can spout all they want about what they want or don't want the oil industry to do or be like, but in the end? We all drive our cars to the grocery store, where we buy food that has been trucked into the area from out of province/state or out of country. Most people have more than one vehicle. We all use products which are made with by-products of oil production.

The easiest way to make a product disappear from the shelves?

Stop buying it.

I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying I'm perfect - we live out of town, and I personally don't really want to carry 200$ worth of groceries home on a bike. We can each make choices that limit the power of the oil companies, and force societies big companies and engineers to look at other resources. We can decide that instead of buying a hummer, maybe we will buy a hybrid. Instead of buying another mid-size car, Sean and I want to buy an electric car when our current car dies. It's the choices we all make that dictate the world we live in; we the people have an incredible power at our fingertips - our money. We only have to chose where to spend it.

I guess one of the main things that annoys me about all of this is that because I'm from Alberta, certain online people feel like holding me personally responsible for the oil sands. o.O Do I wish our world ran on something other than oil? Yes, but in the mean time we are all responsible for our personal choices. Oil has made my province rich, and I will make no apologies for that - most of our oil is shipped to the U.S., among other countries, and while yes, I use oil (who doesn't?) it doesn't make it all my provinces fault for producing it - they are only following the consumerism structures of supply and demand.

Bleh. Okay, rant over. Agree or disagree as you like, haha.

Anyhow. Update on Sean? We think that his heart attack symptoms *may* have been caused by something called the Norovirus. We aren't sure yet, of course, and he still has his stress test at the end of the month, but from what we can tell it seems a likely cause. There has been quite the outbreak up here, and some of the symptoms - difficulty breathing and extremity numbness - can mimic heart attack symptoms. We shall see. He is still sick and still tired, but slowly getting better.

Thanks for listening to my rant, everyone! It seems like one of those...months...where everything is going to bug me, heh heh.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Some of you may already know what is going on, because there are quite a few of you who are on my personal Facebook page. This will post to my other pages, so now all will be in the loop.

Late Saturday morning Brianna and I went out for Coffee with my Dad. Sean, as you know, works most weekends. Saturday morning had turned into early Saturday afternoon, and we were still with my Dad when Sean called me from his boss' cell phone - he was being driven to the hospital with heart attack symptoms.

It's a very long story, as it was a very long day, and I'll just hit the highlights. Dad and I dropped Brianna off with my brother, called my Mom so she would know what was going on, and went to the hospital. The longest almost-hour of my life was spent waiting for the Doctor to see Sean so I could go back and see him.

Hours later, after several rounds of blood-work, an ECG, and a chest x-ray, we had no answers. We still don't. There is no doubt that something happened to him - we just don't know what. Apparently, his heart looks fine. Despite the fact that he only has one and a half lungs (If I have never mentioned that before, tell me. I'll explain.) his x-rays looked fine. We are supposed to get a call today to schedule more tests for him, but beyond that?

No answers.

It seems as though every time I get things together, and am about to start posting regularly, life throws up on me. So, I may post the occasion badly edited vlog because those are quick and easy, I'll probably pop in to do book promo, and I'll probably throw up the posts I talked about on Saturday before...everything happened. Posting will be intermittent - right now, we need to figure out what happened to Sean, and I know that you will all understand and will agree with me when I say my family comes first.

If anyone has any thoughts, ideas, suggestions...they will be most appreciated.